The Islamabad High Court (IHC) ordered on Wednesday the Cabinet Division, Capital Administrative and Development Division (CAAD) and other respondents in a case, to decide the matter of regularisation of the contractual employees, working for prevention and control programs started by healthy ministry, within two months. A single-member IHC, comprising Justice Azeem Khan Afridi, heard the joint petitions filed by employees, working in various health programmes initiated by the Health Ministry before its devolution to provinces, for their reinstatement and regularisation in line with the policy announced by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.
The court directed all the respondents including Cabinet Division secretary, CAAD secretary and sub-committee for Control of Regularisation of Daily Wage Employees to settle the issue as per the policy announced by the prime minister. In their petitions, the employees had contended that the government sacked them against its own policy. The counsels for the petitioners, Shoaib Shaheen and Amjad Iqbal maintained that the government authorities had been clarifying time and again that the contractual employees working in the said projects would not be retrenched.
But, they said, when, after having completed their term of more than three years, the petitioners approached the authorities concerned for their regularisation the Establishment secretary tried to delay the matter by making false promises to them. Counsel Shaheen submitted that after the devolution of the Health Ministry, all the programmes initiated by the ministry were also handed over to the provinces, while some of the staffers were sent to departments working under the federal government.
At that time the government vowed that the said employees would also be sent to the provincial departments and federal departments, but nothing happened so far. The counsels said the petitioners had served the government for more than five years, while the some other contractual employees serving in health department with less than two years of service were regularised. That was a discriminatory act by the authorities, the counsels contended. Upon that, Justice Azeem Khan Afridi ordered the authorities to resolve the issue within two months according to the policy announced by prime minister.
